Aliens/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim dressed like a character from Star Trek, is holding hands with Tramalica. They are on a planet that has a purple sky and orange ground. TIM: Oh, Tramalica, even though we're from different worlds, I feel like I've known you all my life. Is it possible for love to transcend time and space? Tim goes to kiss her. When he opens his eyes he sees Moby. TIM: Aaaah! Tim is lying on a couch. Moby has a letter. TIM: What? I, I wasn't dreaming. Moby gives Tim a letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, are there really aliens? From, Trisha. Well, that's a tough question. The quickest way to answer is: We have no idea. An image shows an alien face. A question mark flashes over it. TIM: The only planets we've really explored are the ones in our own solar system and so far scientists haven't found any aliens. An animation shows planets in Earth's solar system. TIM: Of course, the word alien can mean a lot of things. Movies and books often portray space aliens as intelligent beings, not so different from humans. But an alien, or extraterrestrial, is really any living thing that's not from Earth. Images show different types of fictional aliens including some well-known aliens from popular movies and TV shows. TIM: In fact, most scientists think that if there is extraterrestrial life within our solar system, it's most likely very simple; maybe even like the bacteria here on Earth. An image shows bacteria. TIM: Some experts think certain planetary bodies, like Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, might be able to support microbial life. But no one knows for sure. An image shows Jupiter and Saturn. Arrows point to the three moons. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, I know, I know, you don't care about bacteria. You want to know about serious aliens. An image shows a green alien with a long pointed head and six arms. TIM: Well, any intelligent life in our universe would most likely live on a planet orbiting a star, or a moon orbiting a planet. A split animation shows a planet orbiting a star and a moon orbiting a planet. TIM: Remember, though, that our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains about 100 billion stars. An animation shows the Milky Way galaxy. TIM: And other galaxies outside the Milky Way are millions of light-years away. An image shows other galaxies beyond the Milky Way. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, a light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. Light is the fastest thing in the universe. It goes about 300,000,000 meters per second which works out to about 1.1 billion kilometers per hour. An image shows Moby turning on a flashlight. Light waves appear to be coming from the flashlight and a label states that the speed of light is about 300,000,000 meters per second or about 1.1 billion kilometers per hour. TIM: So the light from our sun can take millions of years to reach some galaxies. The image of the galaxies beyond the Milky Way is shown again. TIM: Imagine how long it would take a spaceship, or even a radio message, to travel that distance. An animation shows a spaceship moving through space. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, the bad news is that exploring billions of stars might take a long time. An image shows an old man and woman in a spaceship. A spider hangs in front of the woman at the controls. TIM: The good news, though, is that with so many stars in the universe, the chances that life does exist somewhere out there seem pretty good. An image shows stars in the sky. TIM: So much so, in fact, that during the early 1960s, a group of astronomers began a program called SETI, which stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. An image shows a large, radio telescope. Under it reads, SETI Institute. A web address reads, http://www.seti.org/ TIM: They started scanning the sky with a gigantic radio telescope, basically a powerful radio receiver, looking for signals that may have been sent out by civilizations on other planets. An animation shows a large radio telescope with signal waves moving below the image. TIM: Today, SETI researchers and volunteers are still listening, trying to find a radio transmission that might have been sent out by intelligent beings. Unfortunately, they haven't found anything yet. An animation shows a computer monitor with the SETI@home webpage open. The page displays a stream of changing charts and statistics. TIM: Scientists are also trying to narrow down the search by first finding planets outside our solar system. So far, they've found more than 500 of these extrasolar planets. But with their being so far away, it's hard to get a lot of information about them. An image shows planets in the earth's solar system and expands to show planets outside of it. MOBY: Beep. TIM: What would aliens be like? I mean, it's hard to say. There's a good chance that aliens will be built out of the same stuff we are: carbon and water. Or, some scientists believe they might be based on the element silicon An image shows carbon, water, and silicon molecules. MOBY: Beep. Moby points at a picture of a flying saucer on the wall. TIM: Right, UFOs. Some people talk about things like crop circles and strange lights in the sky as evidence that aliens are observing our planet from space. Side by side images show a crop circle and a woman looking up and seeing different colored lights in a night sky. TIM: Or, they accuse the government of covering up evidence that UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, are really alien spaceships. An image shows a government agent preventing a woman from taking a photo of a flying saucer. TIM: Some even claim that they’ve been abducted by aliens who ran strange experiments on them. But the truth is, there never has been any hard evidence of aliens visiting Earth. An animation shows a flying saucer at night. It shines a light down on the ground and sucks a person up into the ship. TIM: No one has ever produced a piece of metal from an alien spacecraft, or a piece of alien clothing, or alien technology, or anything like that. Images show a piece of metal with alien writing on it, an alien shirt with six arms, and a strange machine with flashing lights. TIM: And without this kind of evidence, pretty much every UFO sighting or alien abduction can be explained much more simply by factors that have nothing to do with aliens. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Look, for the last time, I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that it's highly unlikely that aliens have visited Earth. MOBY: Beep. TIM: I'm through arguing with you. First you wake me up, and now you won't shut up about aliens! Moby runs off. He comes back dressed as the green alien woman Tim dreamed about. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Whoa. Déjà vu. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Science Transcripts